A View of Svetlana

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31659, 20 April 1968, Page 4

A View of Svetlana

Svetlana: The Intide Story. By Enzio Biagi. Hodder and Stoughton. 158 pp. Enzio Biagi is an experienced Italian journalist with a keen nose for news, and when Svetlana Allulnyeva left her homeland for the West, he sensed that the story told by her relatives and friends in Russia might well be as dramatic as her own tale. So he set out for Moscow and gained a number of interviews with people who had been close to her. To counter her bewilderment with the attitudes of her children, he discovered an intense feeling of betrayal and abandonment in them toward her. To balance her emotional outpourings, Biagi presents a detached factual background. His book is a fascinating supplement to “Letters to a Friend,” and each book sheds considerable light on the other. This one reminds us of many of the harsher facts about Stalin, to which Svetlana closed her eyes as a loving daughter well might.

It fills in details about Svetlana’s friends and lovers, with a brevity and clarity which may come as a shock after the subjective views she herself expresses. The book's full title is “Svetlana: The Inside Story”—and by demonstrating many points of view, Biagi does indeed reveal more of Svetlana’s personality than she does’herself. Outsiders do see her more clearly than she sees herself, although their views differ to this extent: one calls her “jasmine, or even an orchid;” others—“her father’s last victim,” “an erratic personality.” Her son says: “She was certainly sincere, yes, you must believe me. But that’s just how she is. She changes, she grows tired, and so suddenly.” While Biagi refrains from commenting on the opinions of the people he interviewed about Svetlana, readers will construct a vivid picture of this highly complex character for themselves out of • the reminiscences of her friends and family.